Former Palace spokesman Salvador Panelo said Department of Justice (DOJ) Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla and other alter egos of President Marcos should leave their posts for undermining the Chief Executive's official pronouncement that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has no place in the Philippines.

Panelo said this after Remulla in an interview this week said that the Philippines and the ICC can cooperate in certain areas concerning the drug war.

In his statement on Thursday evening, Jan. 23, Panelo said Remulla and those going against Marcos' official position were an embarrassment to the President.

"The alter egos of the President should resign from their positions if they are not comfortable with — or are in opposition to the pronouncements of the President," he wrote.

"They are an embarrassment to the President," he added.

According to Panelo, President Marcos was correct in saying that the ICC has no jurisdiction over the Philippines and that the country will not cooperate with the High Court in any way.

The former Palace official said the ICC's "wrong and intransigent" posturing to place the Philippines under its jurisdiction is an insult and an assault on the country's territorial integrity and sovereignty.

In an interview with Reuters on Thursday, Remulla said that the Philippines would talk to the ICC soon in a "well-defined manner, in the spirit of comity."

"Some people are trying to bridge the divide to bring us together, so we can sit at one table," he said.

"There are certain areas we can cooperate," he added.

In a presser in Pasay City on Friday, Jan. 24, Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin said the Philippines would work with the ICC if the latter would go through the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol).

“If the ICC makes a move and courses the move through the Interpol and the Interpol makes the request to us for the arrest or delivery of the custody of a person subject to ICC jurisdiction, we will respnd favorable or positively to the Interpol request,” he said.

Former president Rodrigo Duterte's bloody war on drugs has been the subject of investigations due to the number of deaths and alleged human rights violations.

Duterte withdrew the Philippines from the Rome Statute in 2019 right after the ICC started looking into allegations of extrajudicial killings during his anti-drug campaign.

In December last year, the House Quad-Committee (quad-comm) recommended the filing of charges for crimes against humanity against Duterte and his allies Senators Ronald "Bato" dela Rosa and Christopher "Bong" Go due to his drug war.

President Marcos left it to the DOJ to decide whether to press charges against Duterte and his allies for the alleged crimes.